


Disappearing Act

by hulklinging



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Character Study, Earth, Family, M/M, Post-Canon, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-06
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-12-24 19:47:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12019737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hulklinging/pseuds/hulklinging
Summary: Pidge Gunderson quietly disappears a few months after they return home.





	Disappearing Act

**Author's Note:**

> I saw a picture of a buff older Pidge and this happened.

Pidge comes home and cuts all her hair off.

She does the media circus first, she poses for the pictures, she goes on the talk shows. She's strange, and her friends notice, although when they ask why she's pitching her voice higher, talking less, she doesn't admit to it. She introduces herself as Pidge Gunderson, the Garrison hopeful which a past no one can quite pin down. But no one seems to really care, distracted by the leader's missing limb, the intergalactic love story of Keith and Lance, how Hunk can quiet his whole team with a smile. With all of these loud personalities, Pidge lets herself fade into the background.

A month after their last scheduled interview, Pidge Gunderson seems to have completely ceased to exist.

She goes shorter than before, buzzes her whole head. It shows off a wicked scar that runs down one side of her scalp, but she doesn't mind. She hadn't protested, when the assistances for the various talk shows and photoshoots insisted she wear makeup. It hadn't made sense to her team, but between the haircut and the lack of makeup, Katie Holt shares nothing more than a passing resemblance to the space war hero.

She teaches self defence to girls at night, and during the day she helps her dad with the miles of data he'd collected from all of the planets they'd spent time on. She stays behind the scenes, plays the younger sister, happy to have her dad and her brother back after all this time. No one watching things she might have played a hand in bringing them home.

Shiro, when he finally has some time for himself, does a double take when he sees her. He came by to say hello to Matt, or so he says. If he doesn't take Matt out on a proper date, now that they're back in a world with things like nice restaurants and old movie theatres playing Star Wars at midnight, she might have to have a word with him.

"Pidge?"

"Hey, boss," she says. The fake high tone she used for the interviews is gone. Her voice is low and smug as she watches the surprise spread across his face.

"Why...?"

Pidge shrugs, then frowns. She had expected this question, had an answer planned for it, but now that she's here in this moment laughing it off doesn't feel quite right.

"We already gave them so much," she says, staring at her computer screen bu not seeing it. "I'm tired. I don't need the world to tell me I'm some hero, and titter over how hard it must have been. I know all that already. The war's over. I don't owe anyone any more of my time."

Shiro comes over and wraps her in a giant hug. She's grown, since she was fourteen and so angry and lost. But he still makes her feel safe in his arms, like the big brother he is. She went to space to get hers back, and came away with four more. It's the best thing to come out of the whole damn thing.

Well, that and Green.

"You were always the smartest of us all," Shiro says, his voice tight.

Pidge laughs. "Duh."

Matt and Shiro elope a few months later. It's less subtle than her own disappearing act, but they tell her about it before they go, so she's not angry. They spend their honeymoon on Olkarion, and come back in the middle of the campaigns for the next election, timed well enough that their return hardly warrents a paragraph on even the most dedicated of blogs.

Keith comes and spars with her, at least once a week. They don't talk much, but that's fine. They don't need to, and if their choppy sentences between hits and blocks cut to the core of each other faster than they used to, they can pretend nothing happened by the time they call it quits for the night. Lance is more erratic in his visits, and Pidge tells him he could come and spar with them at night but he shakes his head.

"Nah, that's Keith and you time. He looks forward to it every week. I'll satisfy myself with our short stolen moments together."

Pidge rolls her eyes, but she can't hide her smile, and she doesn't complain when Lance does things like decide they're all going out dancing, at a club too dark for anyone to really recognize them.

Hunk's grin looks forced, when he stops by. She doesn't say anything, because she knows he'll deny it, but she does mention that her dad is looking for someone to help him with the more technical data. Something in Hunk's shoulders gives, and his exit from the public eye takes the form of a short audio clip, passed around the news reports for a week or two before people grow bored of it.

Lance never quite leaves the public eye, and Shiro still makes news here and there. They're advocates, they're charming and they use that charm to talk about racism, about PTSD, about how big the universe is. Keith, always one for doing as opposed to talking, admits to Pidge one day that he wants to make a home for queer foster kids, a safe place in a system that usually has little to offer them. Pidge helps him in every way she can, and when all the papers are in order and doors officially opens, both of them pretend that its just dust in their eyes.

Pidge the war hero never really returns to public life. But Pidge, just Pidge, Pidge the little sister, Pidge the computer genius, Pidge the paladin, she keeps working away. Saving the world in all the little ways a war hero can't.


End file.
